MI:4 - Mission for Funny

Developer: LucasArts
Monkey Island 4 official page: http://www.lucasarts.com/products/monkey4/default.htm
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3D Simian Fun

To the horror of our office staffers and many fans world-wide, LucasArts announced several months ago that the next Monkey Island game would be in 3D. The holiest of holies, the funniest adventure game series ever with the best cartoon graphics in the world, would go the lifeless way of all-too-serious 3D accelerated graphics.

Trouble's afoot!

Look, a catapult!

The initial outrage subsided somewhat when the first screenshots appeared and the game looked somewhat healthy, but the question always remained: would the graphics maintain the life and vitality of traditional 2D animations of the past games? After all, dropping jaws, ballooning heads, wild facial expressions and other unnatural motions were commonplace in the Monkey Island games. 3D is typically fluid and natural looking, but always stiff and formal. How could it ever be possibly applied to a game that has to have cartoon graphics?

Well, our first impressions with the demo were very favorable. Sure, it looks a bit weird and our old friend Guybrush seems to walk a lot slower and… more artificially than he used to, but the facial expressions are still there. The game has also retained a wide variety of looks among the characters in the game, everything from a catapult operator to the typical pirates (avast ye scurvy 'n flea-ridden dogs!)

Learn somthing new every day

Funny as ever

"Argh!" "Yeargh!" "Rarrgh"

All LucasArts games have excellent voice work. Even since the mid 1990s, they have led the pack when it comes to multimedia effects in games. The voice acting in LucasArts games are generally even better than what we get from Blizzard games. Granted, the exaggerated dialog in the Monkey Island series allows voice actors to better demonstrate their range. Clearly, Monkey Island 4 uses professional voice actors and they are critical to the immersion present in the game. Good speech is so important that it may be better to have text instead of bad or mediocre actors in your game.

Monkey Island 4 doesn't disappoint. The voice acting is excellent all around. Guybrush is a wuss, Elaine is a tough babe, pirates are scruffy and everyone has a good range to reflect their moods.

In town

IHOM

The writing that goes along with the speech is likewise top-notch work. The characters and entire setting are absolutely faithful to the Money Island tradition. This isn't just a comedy set in a parodied pirate setting, but a comedy set in a believable if parodied pirate setting.

The buildings look right, the ships look proper and everyone wears the clothing of the era. Sure it's all upside down and goofy, but at the same time it sucks you in with that touch of realism - adding greatly to the suspension of disbelief.